Flowers and Art

Six years ago, Ginger and I were in San Francisco, spending an afternoon with our daughter, Jessica, before she moved to start her new job in England. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and we were casting about for something to do, somewhere to go, when someone suggested the Legion of Honor. This is an art museum in a beautiful setting overlooking the Bay, and in the several decades I'd lived in Northern California, I'd never visited it. So we went.



To our surprise, there was a special event going on there. Flower arranging clubs (and other organizations related to flowers) were in the midst of a 4-day event at the museum. Each club took a single work of art, a painting or sculpture, and created a flower arrangement that was inspired by, or evocative of, that artwork. It was art inspiring new art in a new medium.



I'll confess that I've never been especially interested in fine art. I've visited many museums, including some of the most famous in the world, and I've perused their collections. Often I've seen things that have impressed me, but it has been from the perspective of someone who never bothered to study fine art. My appreciation was limited, and frankly, I had (and still have) no motivation to go deeper.



Nothing I've seen in those famous museums stirred me like what I saw at the Legion of Honor that day. The wonderfully creative flower arrangements, drew me into the original artwork to see things that I might not have seen otherwise. The flower arrangements presented similar colors, similar lines, similar effects -- and I found myself studying both the flower arrangements and the original paintings or sculptures in more detail than I would have imagined beforehand.



This, I discovered, was an annual event. And in all the intervening years, I haven't returned: I've always remembered it too late in the season. But I was sharing this experience with friends recently, and it prompted me to do some Internet research.



What I found is that this year's event, called "Bouquets to Art" will be at San Francisco's de Young Museum, April 20-24. I've found the website listed as either http://bouquetstoart.org/ or http://www.bouquetstoart.org/, but as of this writing it appears to be down. Still, one can (and should) order tickets in advance through the de Young website.



I apologize to my friends outside Northern California for this "teaser" that you can't take advantage of. And to those in Northern California, I urge you to experience this unique event.